The Collett porch was appealing to me in the day as well as it was in the gatherings at night. I would often sit in the swing watching the activity on the street. It was especially fun during rain. Diagonally across the street was the big Prairie Style house with Tudor features at 5003. It was by far the best landscaped house around with its three-tiered hedges across the front plus the six giant white pots across the front and side. The grass was plush and well maintained where our yard was more bare dirt than grass. One would think the 4938 house with its classical pillars would be as impressive but it was showing its age and was not well kept up. What I liked to look at from the vantage point of our porch was the foliage around the other house. It seemed you could get lost in the shrubbery. Even though the porch was extremely large, it was pretty well hidden by the hedges and shrubs that made it more mysterious.

Although everyone in the family often spoke of the attractive house across the street we never had a thought of ever living in it

Sometime possibly as late 1939 or the early months of 1940, the Schoellkopfs moved from the Tremont house to 4300 Versailles in Highland Park. Damon Shipp then owned the house and I believe he rented it to Raymond Sitzes who owned either the Collett Café or the Collett Club or maybe both.

Probably before the move or shortly after Agnes Schoellkopf was in a January issue of Life Magazine.  She was at debutante ball wearing an array of stars on a full skirt with a bursting petticoat under it.  In the picture below an old friend has picked her up and some young beau is cheek-to-cheek between them.  She was around twenty-one at the time and was quite pretty.  This is the only picture of the Schoellkopfs I have been able to locate.  This was in the first issue of Life in 1940; the Queen Mother was on the cover.

Although Munger Place was a friendly neighborhood and we knew several neighbors we never knew or even met the Schoellkopfs. My dad knew many people in the area from his job but if he ever met any of the Schoellkopfs he never mentioned it that I know of.

One day in early January, 1941 my mother saw someone moving out of the 5003 Tremont house who I believe was Raymond Sitzes. She walked across to talk to some people in the yard and one of them was Damon Shipp, the owner of the house. She asked him if the house was for rent and he said no that he intended to break it into about four apartments. As they talked he found that she really wanted to rent it and when she said she had rented the 4938 house from a Mr. Pappus for about two years he hesitated somewhat. Then he said, “If I had someone who would stay for a long time, then I would be interested in renting it.”

That evening when she told us it was possible to contract the house we could hardly believe it! My brother, Sam, Jr. and his wife Virginia, were know living on Henderson Street near the McMillan intersection so they were not involved with the move. However, they were as excited as the rest of us and were often at the house. Uncle Chess and Aunt Carrie moved to a house on Peak Street near Fair Park. My Aunt Eunice and a friend, Ann, decided to move in with us. Only Eva, the girl from Louisiana didn’t like the new house and moved elsewhere. I could not understand why she didn’t like the 5003 house. I recall her telling me the 4938 house was better architecture or had better lines or something like that. Later, as I understood architectural styles better I understood how she might have felt. Louisiana has many Greek or Classical revival homes and she liked the traditional homes with classical lines and columns. It is interesting that Frank Lloyd Wright considered his Prairie Style a breath of fresh air from what he considered the overdone classical styles.

Just as his contemporary, John Dewey, rebelled against the classical tradition in philosophy, Frank Lloyd Wright lashed out at the neoclassical hegemony in architecture. Such architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright held, was hopelessly derivative and shamefully un-American. That is to say, it was more reflective of the Renaissance than it was of the U.S. physical and cultural landscape. The architecture of the Renaissance, according to Frank Lloyd Wright, was little “but the bare bones of a life lived and dead”. Even the genuine article Frank Lloyd Wright viewed suspiciously. As if to drive home the point that the Greek way was not, or rather should not be, the American way, Frank Lloyd Wright added that Greek architecture was itself largely a sham. Though Wright was admiring of Greek sculpture and the Minoan architecture of the island of Crete, Frank Wright believed that the more typical work of the Hellenistic period was insufficiently sensitive to the natural environment and largely indifferent to the importance of using native materials. What was more, form had no real connection with function in the architecture of the ancient Greeks. Their architectural efforts were, in a word “pagan-poison”.

Frank Lloyd Wright Architect Biography
http://architect.architecture.sk/frank-lloyd-wright-architect/frank-lloyd-wright-architect.php

None of us knew anything about architectural styles, must less the debate of the philosophy or the history of styles, but we did like the 5003 house. Damon Shipp asked $55.00 dollars a month for the house. That seems a rather low price even for 1941. When WWII started soon after the rent prices were fixed at the pre war level but after the war the rent only rose to $65.00 a month. Damon Shipp was not a greedy man; he easily could have evicted us at the war’s end and made much more by breaking the house into apartments.

Surely moving diagonally across the street looked awkward as we carried everything. It was like an endless stream of bundles and boxes. Very little furniture was involved as both houses were rented furnished. The new house had much better furniture but I doubt it was left by the Schoellkopfs. Everything about the move was exciting, the yard was green with the many bushes but the grass was the best part. No other house had grass but this one; that is when I learned there was such a thing as winter grass. The yard had two fish ponds, each with big brown stones encircling them as well as stones everywhere. The porch was gigantic wrapping around to a side door into the dining room. The big two car garage had extra space for a counter and storage underneath. The garage had four big glass windows with iron bars on them.

Most fun for me was seeing who would live in each room. Of course this had been decided before the move but I did not know that. I remember running from room to room seeing who would live where. My Aunt Eunice would live with us for the first time as well as her daughter, Iola. We had a refrigerator for the first time instead of an ice box.

Upstairs the large front room was Nita’s for a short time then Eunice and Verde Gunn occupied the room for a long time. Iola had the east bedroom with the addition. Dale and Vernice had the small west bedroom. While moving things in the dining room that we were using as a bedroom, someone stepped on the buzzer that the Schoellkopfs used to call the maid from the kitchen. For years we would step on the buzzer then joke about the maid we did not have.

Things changed quickly; we moved in sometime in January. By late February, Sam Jr and Virginia had their first child, Sam III, that we called Skipper. Virginia and the baby were put in the original dining room where Eunice and Ann had been and I don’t remember how the changes were made. Ann soon moved away and Mrs. Gunn came to live with us and was with us for years. While Sam, Virginia and Skipper lived a few blocks away the family was still close and they were often at the Tremont house. Sunday dinner usually included at least ten people.

For me there was still much to discover; the house had a basement with a coal furnace that was no longer used. It was a bit scary but more fun was the attic that was the unfinished portion of the second floor. There was a big floored portion over much of the house and two small unfinished rooms as well. If one worked at it you could climb to the attic above the second floor that was the gable over the four front upstairs windows but it was tight and a little too scary for an eight year old.

As the war in Europe continued our government began a draft. Since times were hard, men could volunteer for the draft for one year or so. Both Dale and Vernice decided to do this and we had newspaper coverage with their picture made in the living room. Fifty-nine years later, when Rob and Sharon Smith owned the house many of the Densmores were there for another event in the living room that had newspaper and even national television coverage.

When Leslie and I moved into our house on Santa Barbara Drive in 1971 I wanted to have a yard with trees and shrubs like the one Jessie Schoellkopf had on Tremont.  To actually copy her layout was not practical since the lot was smaller and the house configuration on the lot was different.  Also plants of the 1970s were different than those of the twenties.  I was able to copy her crescent-shaped fish pond as well as use the big brown stones around the pond and elsewhere in the yard.  Once when the 5003 house was vacant, I picked up a brown stone that had survived the years of neglect and brought it home.  While it is still here, I can no longer tell it from the others.

The only picture that exists of the Schoellkopf pond is not discernible.  It barely shows Nita sitting in the foreground and the pond behind is dark and unclear.  The pond I dug was from memory; but it had the crescent shape with the fountain in the back.  I tried to make it a little larger but Nita said it was smaller.  I remembered that at the two narrow corners the rocks covered a long extension of water well-hidden beyond view.

The pond at 5003 Tremont looked much like the one above.  It was in front of the servant quarters that had a long porch and was somewhat hidden by shrubbery.  A large willow tree was just in front of the left corner of the pond.  A fountain at the center back was used only to fill the pond; there was no recycling pump.  The Tremont pond also had water lilies and cabomba plants.

When school was out in June of 1941, Joe Wyatt and I began a tradition of throwing a baseball to celebrate. We also covered the neighborhood and considered it ours. This expanded our group of friends to include Carole Hancock who was five or six and Tommy and Jerry Allen who were about eight and six. All three lived midway on the same block as I did. On the 5200 block of Tremont we met Charlotte and Janet Enochs. Janet is a close friend of ours to this day.

The picture below was taken on the corner of the 5200 Block of Tremont at Henderson probably in the summer of 1941. In the back are the girls’ Aunt Sally and their mother Lois Enochs. In front is Janet at 5 and Charlotte Anne at 8.

A long drought began in the summer of 1941 and lasted
several years often with days of 100+ degrees.

On June 12, 1941 The Starlight Operetta opened at the Fair Park Band Shell pictured below.

It was not altogether a bad idea to be performing outdoors in 1941, if the alternative would have been indoors without the benefit of air-conditioning in the 100-degree plus temperatures typical of summer time in Dallas. What was important was an audience experiencing the magic of live theater. Ten shows, running a week each, were planned for the first season but the season was so successful two additional shows were added. The season ran through September 4, 1941. On stage at the Band Shell’s first production was Sigmund Romberg’s “Blossom Time”, an operetta based on the life of Franz Schubert.

Sometime in the summer of 1941, my dad left the station at Collett and Columbia to manage a Texaco Station in South Dallas at Forest Avenue and Harwood Street. It was another nice station with flowers in a good neighborhood. Again I went with Mom to pick him up after work. The drive took us past Fair Park to Park Lane and then to South Boulevard with its beautiful homes. South Boulevard was one of the few boulevards of the Kessler Plan that was completed. While I knew nothing of the Kessler Plan at that time I did appreciate the beauty of the street.

Pop had not been at the station long before the Texaco sign came down and a Standard Oil sign took its place. The red, white and green Texaco colors were replaced with the red, white and blue Standard Oil colors in the trim around the station. It seemed to me in hardly any time at all the station became a Texaco again and the red, white and green colors returned. I wondered why until in a government class in the late fifties I heard of the Standard Oil Trust suit of 1941 in a government class.

In the fall of 1941 I decided to transfer from Crockett school to Lipscomb. Since I lived on the boundary line (Collett), I could choose either school. Steven Fulda would join me each morning and we would walk to school together. We continued this for two years and Steven was a good companion. He was the smartest kid in our neighborhood and probably in the school. Steven lived across from Joe on the 4900 block of Victor and Joe went to Crockett. The boundaries must have been vague as kids from the 4900 block seem to go to either school they chose.

While Steven was the best student, I probably was the worst but our teacher, Miss Nancy Fewell, was wonderful and I really liked her class. We sat in a reverse alphabetical order so behind me was Brooksie Carnes. This was my first crush; Brooksie had a beautiful flawless olive complexion, along with big deep brown eyes and black lashes. I might have been a better student had I not turned around so much. I recall day dreaming that Brooksie might drive by and see me on the porch of such a fine house.

For three years, starting in 1939 we had two Thanksgiving Days. President Roosevelt, in hopes of improving the economy, moved the observance of Thanksgiving a week earlier to extend Christmas shopping time an extra week. Many people objected and continued to celebrate the last Thursday while others followed the President. Often the complaints were bitter; I recall, “Are you going to celebrate Roosevelt’s Thanksgiving or God’s?” .Years later I learned although the Pilgrims started Thanksgiving it was Lincoln that designated it a national holiday with the date to be chosen by the president that usually fell on the last Thursday of November.

Whatever Thanksgiving we celebrated in 1941, it was in the crowded kitchen since we were using the dining room as a bedroom. Washing dishes in the little sink with a drain board less than two feet square was an amazing accomplishment. We brought most of the dirty dishes to one part of the dining table and placed the dried dishes on the other. Dale sent a letter that said his enlistment was shortened and he would be home in a few days.

Sunday morning, ten days after Thanksgiving, Iola came running down the stairs yelling, “The Japanese are bombing us somewhere…it’s just awful! It’s war! – It’s war!” All of the eight or ten people in the house were gathered by the stairway and stunned; everyone but Grandmother Bell, who had known the Civil War. At 83 she had difficulty moving alone. Iola was always high strung (tending toward hysterical) and we could not get much out of her – “It’s a harbor somewhere – it’s war! war! war!” she kept saying. Actually there wasn’t much more to know other than the harbor was Pearl Harbor but no one knew where that was until it was explained later. She kept saying ‘war’ and I didn’t know what that meant. When I asked her what ‘war’ was she said, “You know, Billy, like the World War, just like 1918.” That didn’t help me at all.

This was about noon when Iola alerted us to the news. After we drifted away from the staircase my dad took the radio to the front porch to listen to the news. It must have been one of the warm days we often have in the winter. While he was on the porch, a taxi drove up and Dale exited and walked up the sidewalk. Pop said, “Son, you might as well turn around and go back.” The cab had no radio and Dale didn’t know what Pop was talking about.

The furor of the day must have made such an impact on me that I remember much of that day. One of my toys was a cardboard airplane instrument panel with a cardboard control stick that sat in your lap so you could play like you were flying an airplane. I played like I was bombing but I wasn’t sure who was doing the bombing. That afternoon we took Dale to his parent’s farm out in Lewisville in our ’39 Chevrolet. On the way home I remember lying in the back seat looking at the clouds imagining airplanes coming out of them.

Harry Gibson, and his wife, Marian Gibson, have lived in Munger Place since 1969 just west of where I lived. They have done much to restore and save the old neighborhood. Harry tells a good story of remembering December 7th. He must have been about eleven at the time and remembers being next door with ‘Betty Jo’ in the big old room adjoining their garage. He said they were alone in that big old room — just him with cute little Betty Jo and that big old room. He said they didn’t really do anything much but there he was in that big old room alone with Betty Jo. Her father stormed in, obviously upset, sternly saying, “Betty Jo, get in the house and, Harry, go home and tell your father we are at war! Harry said he really did not know what war was but it didn’t sound good and Betty Jo’s father was really upset. Harry told his father that Betty Jo’s dad had sent him home and said, ‘we are at war’. While Harry stood in fear of his father’s reaction, he recalls his Dad just said, “That’s right, Harry, the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor.” For days, all people talked about was the war and Harry thought he had caused it by being alone with Betty Jo.

(Harry related the story to me that had occurred fifty nine years earlier, at a party at the turn of the Millennium in 2000 in the study of the home of Rob and Sharon Smith at 5003 Tremont.)

The next day at school, Miss Fewell gave us free time to talk about the war; that enabled me to turn around and look at Brooksie and her dark eyes. The whole country responded to the war effort with scrap metal drives, victory gardens and volunteer work. The city began to grow although housing was scarce; supplies all went to the war effort; causing rationing. At first car prices dropped from fear of little gas and lack of tires; later, they increased since none were being built.

Mrs. Gunn bought a shiny black 1942 Ford Coupe at a very low price but with gas rationing she decided to sell it but was unable to for a long time. Had she kept it until 1945, she could have gotten much more that she paid for it new.

One could follow the war in the papers, especially with the map showing the battle lines. One could also follow the war at Roy Bandy’s Barber Shop. It seemed the wait was always at least an hour but bunches of Life magazines were there to read and keep up with the war.

Joe and I made model airplanes or, at least, Joe did; I may have made a simple one or so but not a worthwhile model. I would rather paint watercolor scenes of planes in the sky. Anything about the war was of interest to us. In 1942 the Ford Motor Company plant on East Grand Avenue converted to war-time production, building jeeps and military trucks.

Sometime in the spring or summer I found a dog in the thick shrubbery at the end of the porch on the west side. This was by the coal chute that was still open but had not been used for years. The friendly dog was blonde or beige with short hair, long ears and brown eyes. There is no doubt that he was of mixed breeds but I thought he was a pointer from a book I had and no one wanted to tell me he was not a thoroughbred. Although he was male, I named him Daisy. He stayed around for the summer in 1942.

Soon after we moved to 5003, Mr. Shipp, the owner, sent a painter out to paint all of the trim on the house but he never came back after the first visit. The house was in pretty good shape but little was done in the thirteen and a half years we lived there. The house needed to be leveled but the problem and there were termintes but it was not too bad yet. However, without treatment it could cause great harm. By 1942 the drought was in its second year but the yard was still green and plush. At sometime in the summer of 1942 Pop said if Mr. Shipp didn’t keep up repairs then we would not keep watering the yard. I loved the yard and did not like what Pop said; looking back later it seemed to me it would be hurting us more than it would Shipp.

The three sketches show parts of the yard where no photos exist. The middle drawing shows the back porch and the arrangement of the hall window and door as it was at that time. The garage, shed, servant quarters and fish ponds are not in any known pictures.

Nita and her small brownie 620 camera gave us several pictures of the Tremont house in the first half of the forties. The little camera had a primitive timer and a small close up attachment. The camera was in use for more than fifteen years. Nita took many more pictures of her friends during the war years.

Many pictures were made on the west side of the house because we thought at that time we were supposed to face the sun to have our picture made. Fortunately the picture of Mom and Pop, below, was made on a cloudy day escaping the harsh shadows of the sun.

Sometime in 1942 the government began the rationing of gasoline, sugar and several other items. Everyone was issued a ration card that had to be signed. Mattie, our maid, who lived in the servant quarters could not read or write. My mother explained the way the card worked but Mattie had to make her ‘mark’ on the card in place of the signature. I must have been a rather snoopy nine year old. I could not wait to see her make her mark. I had heard the discussion of how we could do this for Mattie and was right by her side, wide-eyed, at the kitchen table. It was amazing; to my great surprise, she drew slowly, with great patience, the most beautiful ‘Iron Cross’ for her X that I could imagine. I’m sure she did not know it was a World War I German symbol but Kaiser Wilhelm himself would have been proud of what she drew. It is sad that there was no opportunity for her and her people in our country at that time. She was a proud, brilliant person with great common sense and no doubt hidden artistic ability. She was greatly loved by everyone in the house.

The vines, shrubbery, and cozy corners in the yard were a paradise for me. It was cool under the thick bushes even in the hot summer. Joe and I would play with our toys or play games in the seclusion of the green shelters in the back and side parts of the yard. Hearing of the war in the Pacific that was fought in harsh jungles seemed dramatic to me and I pictured the dense shrubbery as a tropical island. A few years later, when we were approaching our teen years, we had a number of neighborhood friends that joined us in games in the thick undergrowth.

Our next door neighbor, Olina Haeber, often told us of how Jessie Schoellkopf had landscaped the yard. After I grew up I realized how much I owed Jessie Schoellkopf for my love of a beautiful green landscape. Much of the work I later did in my own yard came from her horticultural ideas with fish ponds and rock gardens. At this writing my son, Andrew, mentions how he is going to design his yard in a similar way in his first house. No doubt appreciation in passed on from one to another by familiarity. That is, of course, why Frank Lloyd Wright said, “An instinct for the beautiful is acquired when surrounded by it on a daily basis.” I believe Jessie Schoellkopf would be proud that her influence has lasted a century.

Another bed was on the left side of the room. The room was large enough to have a space for games. In the winter we seldom heated the living room because it took too much time to heat up and the bed room was large enough as a substitute.

Iola’s husband, Grady Mitchell, was a cousin so they had the same last name. He was in the Army in a searchlight unit. Grady later spent a long tour in Italy when our forces landed there. He asked her to send him some pictures of her in a swimsuit. The pictures were so light it looked as if she had no swimsuit on. This embarrassed Iola; I watched her try to color in the swimsuit with a blue pen.

It is amazing the work Mom had to do to with preparing the meals for so many and all of the things that went with such a big house and so many people. This is the corner where we usually put the Christmas tree.

The toy castle was made of cardboard like so many things in the war years. The picture on the wall is of a PT boat. The picture on the desk is of Old Faithful that Nita brought me from Yellowstone Park.

Probably the most interesting person in the house was 84 year old Rosa Caster Bell who was my mother’s mother. I remember going into her room to talk to her even as a young boy when I was four and five years old. By 1942 she was not well but did have visitors. Her father, Daniel Caster, was an interesting man; much of what I know of him comes from family stories and some later research after I was grown. In the mid-1850s , the Casters with a large group came to Texas from Illinois by the Mississippi, to Galveston and then to Peoria in Hill County and to what is now Irving. Some say Dan piloted the riverboat; I find that hard to believe because it takes so much training and experience. However, he must have been held in high esteem by his family and they may have exaggerated his ability.

When North-South relations became heated, Caster did not want to support either side since he was from Illinois and now lived in Texas. Years later I found that Uncle Jack, who I often heard about, was born in 1860 and his full name was Andrew Jackson Caster. This name showed Dan Caster’s stand on the division in the country. Jackson Democrats were for Union and Calhoun Democrats were for Secession. (Both Calhoun and Jackson died many years earlier) Most Texans were Calhoun supporters but Sam Houston and a minority of Texans were Jackson followers.

When the war came Caster would not take part on either side which was most unpopular. People often said, “A man must choose!” In some counties north of Dallas and in the German counties in central Texas many in sympathy for the Union were hung but Caster stayed and tried to remain neutral. Sometime during the war for safety his wife Nancy and five year old Rosa and her siblings returned to Illinois by wagon. Rosa often told of the hardship of the journey.

Rosa often told a story of her father, Daniel, but with a great deal of sorrow. Caster was at a campfire at the Dallas Courthouse. It was night, the men were cooking after an auction. Dan had outbid a man over livestock. When some man played and sung a song supporting the southern cause, the man Dan had outbid said, “That song doesn’t suit you does it, Dan Caster?” The man had been drinking and Dan tried to ignore him but he pulled a gun and dogged Caster with the gun in his ribs. Caster was left-handed and this is said to have saved his life. For some reason being left-handed allowed him to pull his knife and he stabbed his assailant before he could pull the trigger. When Rosa told the story to my mom, Netta, and to Eunice, Iola and Opal, it was with sadness. She said her father grieved over killing the man and did not live long after it. Later I researched some Caster relatives and the sheriff department and found the man was Trezevant Hawpe, but what surprised me was that he was an ex-Sheriff and an ex- Confederate Colonel. I asked James Ewell, the publicity director, in the Sheriff’s department how could have Caster survived considering the political climate. (This was in August of 1863.) Ewell said Hawpe was known to be a likable man but overbearing when drinking and was the known aggressor and Caster was no billed. Rosa told many stories of the difficulties her father had during the war and after.

Rosa was orphaned when both parents died during reconstruction. Rosa remembered her father with great admiration the few years she knew him. As a child she fell in the well in their farm in the Irving area. Her mother blew the conch shell Dan had picked up on Galveston Island and Dan ran in from the fields and rescued her. She had a boyfriend who was John Wes Chisum. I wonder if he was related to the famous cattleman John Chisum who lived in the Irving area before going to New Mexico. There are Chisums still in Irving who I have talked to but have given no information. She remembers shopping at Sanger Bros. where Frank James waited on her. She was downtown in 1910 after the lynching of a black man whose body was left hanging from the Elk’s Arch and came home terribly disturbed and never forgot what had been done.

I remember little of conversations with my grandmother but I recall hearing a conversation in her room when some cousins from Irving visited. They asked her how she felt about being taken care of by a nigger, referring to Mattie the maid. With a strong voice she said “Mattie is not a nigger”. They laughed and said, “Aunt Rosie, can’t you see she is black”. Rosa Caster Bell replied, “Mattie is not a nigger!” They laughed and thought she was becoming senile if she couldn’t tell that Mattie was black. At that time considering the mores of that era I missed what Rosa likely was telling them. Later when I knew more of the world and her life and her father, I realized the point she was making. She was the proud daughter of Daniel Caster.

Later when looking into local history I found an ironic coincidence. Trezevant Hawpe’s farm was on Hawpe Lane, the street that later was Junius. His large farm was centered at his big house under a large tree that was located at what became the intersection of Worth and Augusta. I passed under that tree every morning when Steven Fulda and I walked to Lipscomb School. Rosa Caster Bell lived her last few years adjacent to the land that belonged to the man that challenged her father over the meaning of a song some eighty years before.

With so many men, mostly single, going into the armed forces, there was a shortage of available companions for the girls. A popular song was titled ‘They Are Either too Young or too Old.’ Nita and her friends were always around looking for something to do. Living close by in East Dallas were Mary Bess and Marjorie. When talking to Marjorie, who lived on Alton Street next to the Santa Fe railroad, Nita could hear the train whistle over the phone and shortly later she could hear the same sound from our house. Marjorie was an artist and often they would work together on things at our house.

Much of their time was occupied with Scofield Church that was downtown at Bryan and Harwood. The church was involved with Camp El Har in Duncanville where they often went. The camp was in the southwest part of Dallas County in some rolling hills with creeks running through. There is an abundance of cedar trees that give a green look during the winter as well. It was thirteen miles from Dallas; that was considered a long way at that time. A car was necessary to go to El Har but the rest of Dallas was easily reached by streetcar or bus.

One of her friends was Bettilu Roper. Bettilu was the daughter of the Minister at Scofield Church, Harlan J. Roper and his son David was a friend of mine.

Often the girls would be at our house caught up in something and Joe and I enjoyed helping them, pestering them or just watching them. I was nine and Joe was ten and although we had few thoughs about girls we did notice that they were attractive. We probably did silly things for attention just to be noticed. When they took pictures of each other we were always watching.

Marjorie and Nita (above) cleared out Nita’s bedroom (the original dining room) to make a flag for Camp El Har.

Through the summer of 1942 the war in the Pacific slowly improved. Earlier in the spring we were continually losing ground. Bataan fell in April and Corregidor in May. Although we won The Battle of the Coral Sea in May, Japan was still making progress in The Dutch East Indies toward Australia. Bu,t in June, we won the Battle of Midway that was later seen as the turning point in the Pacific war. It was a great victory but Japan had so much territory it looked like it would be a long time before victory and it was. On August 7 the Marines landed on Guadalcanal; this began the long slow progress of island hopping that continued for three years.

Following the war was interesting to me. I loved the maps in the newspaper that showed the battle lines and collected them. Joe and I memorized the airplanes of all of the countries involved and the army divisions and their leaders. Newsreels at the theaters also explained situations. Even though things looked bleak the months following Pearl Harbor, I don’t believe any one thought we would lose.

The barber shop in the foyer of Miller Cleaners was a great place to follow the war. The wait was usually rather long and everyone talked about the war. The line was longer because Joe Bandy had left for the war and Roy had to handle the crowd. The Life magazines were most informative. Everything was discussed there. It was that summer that many of the old codgers laughed at the shop owners along Elm Alley (old Centre St.). The shop owners petitioned the city to change the name from Elm Alley to Collett Place. The name Elm Alley sounded much like Deep Elm that at that time was rather a derogatory name. Most of the crowd in the barber shop thought the shop owners were pretentious and trying to reach beyond their standing.

In September 1942, school started for me at Lipscomb Elementary School; this was not an interesting year. I no longer had Miss Fewell who was hard to replace and Brooksie Carnes had moved to Irving. Pop had a new station at Oak Lawn and Lemmon, again in a nice section of town. As usual he had a clean station and he planted flowers. I suppose he watered them but he no longer would water the grass at home.
Sam Jr., Virginia and Skipper had already moved to Ft Worth and Sam was working for Canteen, a vending machine company. In October, their second child, Betty, was born. They visited us very often and we would often drive to see them. They had a victory garden that was behind their house on some open space that was rather large. Many neighbors had plots with them and it was a noteworthy example of people working together in the war effort.

On November 8, 1942 American and British forces landed in North Africa; this was the first American offense in the Atlantic theater of the war. One of the cities in the landing was Casablanca and that name was heard on the news and newspaper all the time. A movie Casablanca came to Theater Row on Elm Street that was advertised a great deal as well. Joe and I could not wait to take the streetcar downtown to see what we thought would be about the Allied invasion. We had no idea that it would take a long time to produce a movie on a battle that just took place and the movie was a love story that was set at the time of the fall of France prior to our entry in the war.

The introduction to Casablanca shows a map of Europe to illustrate the situation in Europe in 1940 when France fell to the Nazi’s and the establishment of Vichy France. That was necessary for the setting of a love story taking place in 1940. So far so good – a map of war time Europe looked to Joe and I like a suitable beginning for a war movie. But then something happened – to us a sickening love story followed that Joe and I didn’t understand plus didn’t care about. For years I hated what many consider one of the finest movies ever made.

I remember nothing of Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1942. I’m sure we had many people in the house for both holidays. Sam, Virginia and both Skipper and Betty would have come from Ft. Worth and Eunice and Iola would have been there and we usually invited Mrs. Gunn who lived with us for a long time. Dale and Vernice were in the Army. Even with help from Mattie, the women were heavily worked with so many in the small kitchen. There could have been eleven at the table. Grandmother Rosa was confined to her bed and had her meals brought to her.

Sometime in 1943 Rosa was moved to a nursing home located about midway on Worth Street just across the alley from us. We were fortunate to find a place so close to us for her. I recall her memory was sporadic but we could still talk to her. Her room on the east front of the house that was built as a study was now open to me. I remember Joe and me playing in the room a great deal of time. The room had no closets but it was large with beautiful windows. This was my room off and on; we seemed to move back and forth with the rooms quite a bit.

During the war women played in company softball leagues due to the shortage of men in the military service. The minor league baseball team in Dallas and elsewhere had closed. Joe’s father, Bennie Wyatt, worked for the Wyatt Metal and Boiler Works industry that had a girl’s softball team. I believe Bennie Wyatt helped coach the team and would bring Joe and me to the games in his ’35 Chevrolet coupe. The games were on a field that is now the parking lot for the State Fair Music Hall. At that time the ball fields were between the Music Hall and the swimming pool. Joe and I would play in the sand and come home covered with it.

Baseball had been a part of Joe’s and my array of interests for the three or so years we had known each other. When school was out in June of 1943, we decided to form a baseball team. Whether it was to be baseball or softball I don’t remember and I doubt if we even thought about it. We gathered a few kids in the neighborhood together, maybe Tommy and Jerry Allen, Steven Fulda and surely a few others were involved but I wonder who. All we accomplished was talk.

This team was going to play in my front yard.

Surely we knew this was doomed for failure but then our optimism was often naïve. Once in Joe’s backyard we laid out some boards in what we thought looked like as airplane and I remember thinking it might really fly. Our humiliation of failure was saved by a polio epidemic. Seven hundred cases of polio were found in the area and people were told to keep children inside. All thirty four swimming pools were closed as well as our ball team. Actually our failed attempt to entrepreneurship was not altogether in vain. Five years later we were able to form a neighborhood team and played several sports for about a three year period. Our team still meets together today at a café in Munger Place.

Although the polio scare restrained us from group activities, the limits were loose. I did spend more time in my new room on the east front of the house; I began to collect war maps and followed the war news that I began to enjoy. Joe and I played at both houses; his house at 4923 Victor was a big prairie style with a lot of room and a big back yard. I suppose we didn’t think we would catch polio from each other. Sam, Virginia and the kids still would visit often and Nita and her friends were around as well in spite of the precautions.

Many young girls just out of high school were moving to the city to work in offices because of the shortage of manpower from the war. Mom rented one of the upstairs rooms to Alma Jean and Janelle from Van Alystne, a town a few miles north of Dallas; they came to Dallas to work. Joe and I (age 10 & 11) thought they were beautiful. I liked Alma Jean and he liked Janelle. They were really nice to us and put up with us probably because there was nothing else to do. Once when they were sitting on the porch Joe and I played as if we were airplanes and ran with our arms out like wings back and forth on the long porch. Once we crashed into their laps and decided that it was a rather pleasurable thing to do. They put up with it for several crashes then abruptly walked into the house.

They must have forgiven us because they often wanted us to go with them to the Pharmacy at Fitzhugh and Gaston for ice cream. They openly told us to talk to guys there they liked so they would not have to be that forward. Sadly for them they were hardly any guys around.

I could not buy a new bike because they were restricted due to the war. Used bikes were impossible to find. At sometime, probably that summer, my dad came home with a bike he bought from someone that came in to his station at Lemmon and Oak Lawn. It cost ten dollars and had many shortcomings but it was a bike. The front forks were not lined up and the front wheel would fall off pretty often. The weight of the rider kept it from falling off when riding.

Shortly after Pop brought the bike his doctor told him his blood pressure was critically high. This was not news, he had the problem for years. His diet was not good but we didn’t know better in those years; he smoked and his was always hurrying around that would be called type A behavior today. He was told to take off and rest until it was lowered. He was off for several months and likely went back to work too early.

In September I changed schools and was back at Crockett. I recall a heavy rain that September that ended the drought. Pop and I watched it from the screened-in back porch behind the hall. With Pop around and with all of the others in the house, things were even more fun. I have no idea how we survived without his income but the many rented rooms must have helped.

Joe and I spent much time on the screened porch when the weather was warm enough. The top of the row of storage cabinets provided ample space to play. Mom always left the wash tub behind the washer. There was a British fighter plane with a sleek look that was a favorite of mine. It had a turret behind the pilot to protect the aircraft from the rear as well as the sides. The washtub behind the washing machine reminded me of the British fighter. I spent much time in the washtub shooting down Nazi planes. The tub was high enough that I could look down to the back yard as if I was high in the air.

On September 3rd Italy surrendered at the same time British units landed on the toe of Italy. I excitedly colored in all of Italy for the Allies on my war map for Europe. The coloring of the map was way too premature. What actually happened was no territorial gain for the Allies because the many German forces were throughout Italy and quickly secured the land. My map was ruined for there was no way to erase my mistake and I had difficulty understanding why we didn’t get it all. The good news was a Miss Carroll who was the geography teacher at Crockett. She was the best teacher I had until I was in Jim Riddlesberger’s government classes in college.

On Christmas 1943 we again had many people as usual and the only gifts I asked for were maps. I have no memory of New Year’s during the war years at the Tremont house. On New Year’s Day Mom always made black-eyed peas fried in grease in the big heavy skillet that everything else was fried in – always in grease.

Early in 1944 we knew Sam Junior would be called into the military soon. Men with two children were now being called. The war news continually became better. Miss Carroll at Crockett school gave us the Scholastic Magazine that covered world events; that was timely. She was the only teacher I had at that time that really cared about individuals. I was somewhat afraid of the others especially the math teacher, Miss Fields who terrified me.

By January 1944 our forces in Italy were held up near Monte Casino but were able to break through. A few months later the Commander of a bomber squadron to the south of our line was Major Ted Lincoln who was a member of our church. Major Lincoln’s squadron bombed the oil fields in Romania and other targets in Italy and Eastern Europe. I was aware of the long battle around Monte Casino but was yet to meet Ted Lincoln

With the exception of Miss Carroll I really disliked school and my life revolved around my house and the neighborhood. Looking back today I can see why Frank Lloyd Wright said a house can make a difference. The attic, garage and the yard with its heavy shrubbery was my world. Joe, myself and other neighbors like Carole Hancock, Jerry and Tommy Allen would often play in the thick shrubbery.

We took apart a trellis to use its thin wood strips to make swords to fight medieval wars. With a small knowledge of history and a lot of imagination, we recreated the middle ages. The trellis was broken up to craft the St. George Cross and the St Andrew Cross that compose the Union Jack. Why my parents allowed me to tear down the trellis, I don’t know. Obviously, I did my part in the decline of the house. We also made the Cross of Lorraine that was the symbol of Charles De Gaulle’s Free French government in exile.

Sometime that spring, Sam Junior received his call for military service. He had once been in the Naval Reserve so he asked to serve in the Navy. Mom was upset and told him she was afraid of the water. Sam grinned and said, “But Mom, I’m not”. Sam came from his home in Ft. Worth to our house on Tremont since his train started in Dallas. That weekend we took many pictures in the back yard but we all looked awful. He asked Nita to drive him to the station because he said she was the only one in the family that would not cry. When they left, I went to the window in the bathroom that looked out to the backyard to watch him leave. I was so afraid he would not come back I wanted to remember the last time I saw him.

Sam’s train was to take the new recruits to San Diego but was delayed for an hour in Ft. Worth. Sam said it was one of the worst hours of his life because it was on an overpass that had a full view of his home about four houses away.

One of the pictures in the back yard before Sam left for the Navy. Left to right are Nita, Bill Sam Sr.(Pop), Sam III (Skipper), Sam Jr. Mom (Netta), Virginia and Betty. No one looked happy and the other pictures are worse.

The picture below of Virginia and Sam was probably made at the Botanical Gardens in Ft. Worth. After ‘Little Sam’ (He never liked to be called Sam, Jr.) left for the Navy, Virginia with Skip and Betty stayed in Ft Worth for a while then later went to Little Rock where her mother lived. Sam went to San Diego for recruit training for a few months and then to Hawaii for a short stay before leaving to the Pacific front as the war moved westward.

Shortly after Sam left for the Navy, Pop decided to take over his route for the Canteen Company in Ft. Worth. His blood pressure must have been better. I have no idea how high it must have been but in a couple of letters from Mom to Nita what they thought was good was not. In one letter, probably late ’43 or early ’44 Mom said Pop’s blood pressure was better at 160 / 115. In another letter in September of ’44 Mom said it was 155 over 100 and followed with “isn’t that good?” At that time, rest was about the only cure and he must have rested eight or so months.

By the summer of 1944 the number of kids in the neighborhood was growing. In addition to Joe, Carole, Tommy and Jerry, the Michell family moved into 5120 Tremont. There were five children in the family. John the oldest was in high school and much older than most of us. Ann was 12, Kay was 10, David was 8 and Craig was 5. Steven Fulda had moved to Worth Street near Prairie and we did not see him as much as before. He was close to Hugh Farrell and Doug Stocks who we knew but the two blocks away seemed too long away for some reason. Leon (Buster) Fowler was on our block but was soon to move away. We spent much time with 72 year old Mrs. Pace who lived next door to Carole. Mrs. Pace went everywhere with us- especially to the Rita theater that we attended two or three times a week.

The Michell house with its wraparound porch was on the corner by Munger Boulevard with the side porch facing the esplanade on the boulevard. This arrangement had much to do with the future organization of our close group that is still in contact after sixty-five years. With the five kids in the Michell family and the nearby boulevard to play in, we grew into a close unit. The porch and the boulevard space were overrun by the neighborhood kids for about a decade.

As early as May of 1944 and maybe earlier, the country was aware of the coming invasion of Nazi-held Europe by Allied forces in England.

Air raid sirens had been in place early in the war but never used. By 1944 it was obvious they were not needed so the public was notified that on news of the coming invasion they would be sounded. In the early hours of Tuesday, June 6, they went off all over Dallas. For some time, they sounded wailing in a crescendo. Instead of the sirens bringing fear, it was just the opposite -it was a big step in ending the war. Mom and I woke at the start of the loud piercing shrill and turned on the radio. Pop

was in Ft. Worth working for Canteen Vending Company where he had taken Sam’s job when he left for the Navy. All the radio covered was speeches from government officials of various Allied nations. This was a great disappointment to me as I expected a play by play of the action like in a war movie. I’m not sure but I think it was the next day or so before we knew it was a successful landing. The only person close to us that we thought might be in the invasion was my cousin Dale and later we found out that he was. His brother, Vernice, was in the Army Air Corp in England.

Sometime that year the front fish pond began to leak and then emptied. There was a large crack across the middle. Pop said there was no use to fix it because it was from the ground settling; if we concreted it over the ground would settle again. Sometimes we would fill it with water and Carole and I would swim or actually wade in it before it leaked out.

Across Collett from our house a large sewer was either repaired or built new. This may have been part of the long effort to contain the natural flow of water that once was Peak Creek. It was the large type that one could walk in. The kids in the neighborhood would watch the men working and often play in and around it when they were gone. Once when I was standing beside the huge ditch a car passed and Miss Fields, who terrified me, stuck her head out of the window and yelled,” Billy Densmore, get away from that hole!” The security of my whole world around my home was shattered. She could even get to me on my home ground. Looking back I realize I lived in two worlds and the one that revolved around my house was precious.

The sewer was so large that the crew had trouble finding places to move the massive hills of dirt that were piling up. Pop, concerned about the fish pond, ask the foreman if we could have the dirt to fill it. It was not long before the east part of our front yard was covered with a giant pile of black Texas gumbo soil.

Pop recruited Joe and I to first break up the waterfall and surrounding stone and push them in the empty pond. Why we didn’t just fill the hole with the dirt alone and leave the stones in place, I don’t know. I loved the stones and particularly the bowl shaped ones that made the waterfall. These were big stones with interesting shapes and surfaces. I can’t remember if I tried to talk him into leaving the stones in place or not but I think I surely would have. Pop didn’t have much of an eye for the aesthetics and I suppose I should not complain. My premise is that one’s surroundings have an effect on one’s appreciation of beauty which comes from Frank Lloyd Wright. Pop, intentionally or not, provided me with such an environment while he had the hardship of growing up in a log cabin in Alabama.

I have to admit Joe and I with great glee broke the decorative stones into small pieces and dumped them to the floor of the former pond. It was much easier to break the stones than to move the dirt but what had been an attractive place was rather bland. Years later Rob Smith dug them up and placed them back around the perimeter.

Rosa Caster Bell died in August 1944; she was eighty-six. Her funeral was in Irving attended by her many descendants that included Mom, Pop, my Aunt Eunice, Nita, Virginia and me. Probably Skip and Betty were there but I am not sure. She was buried in Sowers cemetery with many of her relatives that pioneered that area. There is no marker there now but I have a slight remembrance that one existed in the 1950s. I believe her grave is in a section where other Casters or possibly Bells were buried.

By the end of the summer of 1944 American forces in the Pacific gained the control of Guam and the Marianas Islands that included the island of Saipan. This put us much closer to Japan. There was talk of a new super bomber that was being built that was much larger than the B-17 Fortress and the B-24 Liberator. It would carry more bombs and would have a range that would reach Japan. In August Allied forces had liberated Paris.

Each night from ten to ten-fifteen we listened to the news that updated us on the war. Other news commentators had programs on the war as well. I particularly liked to listen to Gabriel Heatter who had a theatrical, melodic wavering voice that would cry out, “Ah, there’s good news tonight” or if the situation was not so good he would moan out, “sad news tonight. Once a few years later when Stalin and the west began to separate into the Cold War, his opening was, “There is a crazy man laughing in hell tonight,” referring to Hitler.

The atmosphere in the Tremont house revolved around the war and church with church getting the greater emphasis. I recall one Sunday Mom and Pop talked about walking down to the Rita Theater to see a movie but changed their mind since they had not gone to church that morning. I suppose the Rita Theater rated third in status behind the war and much below the church.

In September 1944 I enrolled at Crockett Elementary for the seventh grade and my last year there. I was eleven and felt grown up. I remember riding my bike to school on a bright sunny day. It was a great time to be in Miss Carroll’s class with the hope of victory much closer in the war and the unknown changes coming. On the first day for a short time I was upset because my schedule listed a Mrs. Grumbles for the 7th period Language Class. All day I dreaded the last period when I would have to face her. Already terrified of Miss Fields, Miss Landrum and Mr. Roary, the principal, what would this Mrs. Grumbles be? As the poets might say, “O’ thou of faint heart”, my fear was quelled on first sight of one of the most beautiful teachers I ever saw. From the first class on it was apparent she was a most personable and caring person and different than any other teacher in the school. Not to take anything from Miss Carroll who was a very caring person and still remained my favorite teacher but neither did she take an individual interest in each student nor was she a living goddess. Jerry Grubbs and I still today reminiscence of the seventh grade year and how much Miss Grumbles added to it.

I failed to notice on my schedule card the ‘Mrs.’ In front of Mrs. Grumbles name. She was one of the first married teachers allowed to teach in Texas. Whether that made a difference in her warmth might be unfair to say as many single teachers were kind, fair and caring like Miss Carroll and Miss Fewell. More likely was a change in education that placed an emphasis on the individual as well as other more thoughtful methods of motivating students. Thanks to Mrs. Grumbles the school year was a pleasure for our class.

In September 1944 Nita went to school in Los Angeles. This was Biola Institute, a fundamentalist Christian school. She had saved money to go and I think Mom and Pop helped but I don’t know where the money came from. Living in Los Angeles were my mother’s sister Florence and her husband Bryan. My cousin, Opal, and her son, Ronnie, lived with them and they were probably the most creative of all of our relatives. They started a family tradition with us involving a cake at Christmas. California had dates but no pecans where in Texas it is just the opposite so we would send them pecans and they would send us dates. We each would make a date-nut cake that was rather unusual. I have no idea who conceived the idea but it was made for years. It could have started as early as 1938 or as late as the mid-forties. My wife Leslie obtained the recipe in hopes of keeping the tradition alive.

In the picture to the below are Ronnie and Opal at their house with Florence and Bryan in Los Angeles. Opal was a multi talented person who was on radio shows and was able to get Ronnie in some movies when he was a young child. As the picture shows she was a gardener and a designer. The yard, front and back, was covered with unusual tropical plants, tropical birds, fountains and statues. Nita and her friend Mary Bailey visited them often.

When Aunt Florence, Uncle Bryan ,and Opal moved to California they brought with them the conch shell that Dan Caster had picked up on Galveston Island in the mid-1850s when arriving in Texas. It was used on the farm to call in cattle at the end of the day and in emergencies. The farms were in Peoria and Sowers, both in Texas. Peoria is in Hill County and Sowers in now a part of Irving. When Caster’s daughter Rosa (my grandmother) fell in the well as a young girl, her mother, Nancy Beets Caster, blew the shell and Dan ran in from the fields to save her. The shell became a family heirloom. The shell was passed on to Opal and then to her son, Ronnie Carder, who lives in San Diego. Aunt Eunice, her daughter, Iola, and husband, Grady, moved to California making seven family members living in California. Today, the California family includes Ronnie, Nita’s sons Ted III (Teddy) and Jim plus Jim’s wife Jill and their daughter Ainsley, numbering five.

Ted Lincoln arrived in Spinazzola, Italy in the fall of 1944 from a base in North Africa. He was the commander of a bomber group that flew 35 missions over Italy and the Balkans. The big B-24 bombers’ main targets were the Ploesti oil fields of Rumania (Romania seemed to be spelled Rumania then). Ted had joined the Army Air Force in 1939 or 1940 prior to the war. When the war came, he trained many pilots when the war started then he asked to leave Randolph Field to become a fighter pilot at the war front. Because of his experience and maturity he was denied his request and given the command of a bomber squadron. The reasoning was that young reckless men were better as fighter pilots and he was more suited to command a bomber. His 35 missions were counted as 50 because of the extra hazards involved.

Edward Jablonski’s book titled Airwar mentions a model of the Ploesti Oil Fields in Rumania formed in the sand on the Libyan Desert to train B-24 crews to know every detail of the target before the actual bombings. The Ploesti fields were most important to the Nazi military machine because of their output and the fact that everything that moved needed oil. I wonder if Ted and his command trained on the model in North Africa before going to Italy?

The heavy shrubbery around 5003 Tremont was a draw to the neighborhood kids to play games. For years, we played Kick the Can that involved hiding in the many corners covered by shrubs in our yard. In the big garage there was an attic of sorts. The tall hipped roof had many slanted beams and flat cross rafters. Instead of a floor there were several wide door sized boards used for storage that lay across the rafters. In the fall of 1944, we would often climb up on the flat boards and talk and tell stories and sometime sing. Tommy, Jerry, Carole, Patricia, Kay, David, and Dale McClendon would join Joe and me. It was dusty but it was like a secret club house.

As the weather became cooler, Joe and I would play in the attic of the house. This was the unfinished part of the second floor that had no walls, just the slant of the high roof. It had a floor that covered almost all of the space. My Aunt Eunice stored some big hair dryers from her beauty shop that stood from the floor on rollers. Each had a giant hood to cover the head of the customer. This was like a Frankenstein movie set for Joe and me.

The attic had two small rooms facing each other. In the one on the north side, I found a five volume set on Texas History that was left by the Schoellkopfs. This fit right in with my Texas History class with Miss Carroll. I kept the books for years until they fell apart in the seventies.

Most of the family letters that exist during the time we lived on Tremont were written in this time period. Little Sam was overseas, Nita was in Los Angeles and Virginia with Skip and Betty had just moved to Little Rock where Virginia’s mother lived. The letters are mostly about small things they are doing. Nita mentions visiting with Aunt Florence’s family in their beautiful home in Los Angeles, Sam told us about Hawaii. Mom’s letters cover things about church and our friends there but little is said about the war.

From Mom’s letters to Nita we do know something about November 1944. My school was out the third Thursday of the month, Nov. 16, that was the Thanksgiving the president urged the counrty to observe to increase shopping time for Christmas. We decided to use the long weekend to visit Virginia and the kids in Little Rock. I remember it well as my first long car trip. The next Thursday, the 23, we had Thanksgiving with Pop’s brothers and sisters and others that totaled 19 people at our house.
How that was done in the small kitchen that doubled as a dining area I can’t remember. We must have had informal dining arrangements and served throughout the house.

My Dad dug up a pine tree while visiting Virginia in Arkansas that November. He planted it in the front yard by the front walkway; that would have been a terrible location had it not died in a short time. Pine trees seldom grow here without adding acid and fortunately we did not know to do so.

On Friday, November 24, the day after the second Thanksgiving, the new long awaited super bomber, now called the B 29 Superfortress was finished and a squadron took off from Saipan in the Marianas. The mission was to fly to Japan on a heavy bombing mission and return. Finally after almost three years we were close enough to Japan with a bomber with the range to reach their home islands to bomb and return. This was a tremendous step forward in the war. With airstrips on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam and B-29s rolling out of our assembly lines in great numbers, Japan was in great trouble.

Sam sent us a letter telling us he had been transferred to ‘somewhere in the Pacific’. He could not tell us where he was and his letters were censored. Ours to him were not. His new job was tracking our forces on large tables with model planes and ships that were pushed around with long sticks.

Mom and I pulled out my maps of the Pacific and tried to guess where he might be. Mom must have come up with the idea of sending him a letter with the likely locations where he could be stationed and numbering each one. We asked him to send back to us the number he would like for his Christmas present. His return letter included the number for Guam. It was interesting that he was at the location of the massive bombing raids that were just beginning and were helpful in closing the Pacific war. While we followed the events of the war closely at home, of all the letters written by anyone in the family during that time, nothing was said about the war. Of course, Sam could not have said much because of censorship. Also, in the fall of 1944, Major Ted Lincoln’s squadron was bombing Trieste on the north end of the Adriatic Sea and the Ploesti oil fields in Rumania.

At Christmas my sister, Nita, was home from school in California and the family gathering must have been smaller without Sam, Virginia, Skip and Betty. Eunice and Iola were there. I’m sure the tree was in the usual west corner of the living room. Mrs. Gunn and a new tenant, Elsie, who lived in the small west upstairs bedroom most likely, joined us. Eight would have been a small number compared to most holidays.

Letters from Mom, Nita and Sam identify some events around the Tremont house in 1945. My Dad’s blood pressure was better by 1945 standards and he was talking about buying a small grocery store. The house was ageing since there were no repairs because of the war and probably the repairs would not have been done anyway. The owner, Damon Shipp, most likely neglected upkeep as he would just as soon we would move out so he could cut the house into apartments. On the other hand, he never forced us to move in the thirteen years we were there; however, when my mother did move out in 1954, it was due to neglect.

On February 12 1945, my dad, with my cousin Dale, bought a grocery on 815 Henderson. Dale was in the war in Europe probably about the time we crossed the Rhine. I suppose Dale sent money for his part and my Dad sold the ’39 Chevrolet in order to make the deal. It was apparent the war in Europe would soon be over but everyone thought the Japanese would fight to the last man and the war in the Pacific was to last much longer.

In March Iola’s husband, Grady, was home on leave then Iola went with him to his new base somewhere in the states.

On the night of the ninth and tenth of March, incendiary fire bombs on Tokyo killed 83,000 and injured 100,000; the war in the Pacific was getting worse with no end in sight.

In April we had a big gas leak causing the gas to be cut off for several days during repair. On the ninth of April, Virginia made a visit probably to look for a job in the defense plants as well as to look for military housing for herself, Skip and Betty.

On April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died; the shock was great – we almost thought he was immortal. Looking back at his pictures at Yalta and elsewhere, it is obvious he was in bad health and we should not have been surprised. Although I was twelve, he was the only president I had ever known. Although I had seen newsboys selling extras in movies this was the only time I saw extras actually sold. A newsboy walked from the east side of the yard yelling the headline, “President Succumbs.”

By May it was apparent the war in Europe would end soon and on May 8 it was over. Much of the talk was about what happened to Hitler and it was a long time before it became clear that he committed suicide. While the elation of the victory was great, the fear of a prolonged war with Japan remained.

When school was out at the end of May, I remember walking home from school excited that the war would be over soon. I had a Junior Scholastic magazine with a cover showing an unmanned rocket in space that said, “The World of 1965.” I kept the magazine for years to see if it would ever happen then discarded it in the fifties as old hat. Throughout the war people talked about how good the future would be after a decade and a half of depression and war.

My sister, Nita, was coming home from college in Los Angeles. Aunt Eunice was moving from Nita’s bedroom that she had occupied to the big center bedroom upstairs so Nita could have her old bedroom back. This room was the actual dining room but we had used it as a bedroom since we moved in the house in 1941. When we met Nita at the station (either the train or bus station – I can’t remember) Mom was upset since Nita did not wear lipstick or make-up. Biloa was a church school and Nita was just following the rules but that must have been too strict for Mom. We had cold cuts that night and I am sure of this because Nita always said we had cold cuts when she came home and a big meal followed by Strawberry Short Cake later when Sam came home.

I enjoyed the summer with Nita at home; we went places in the car and she would play the radio. Mom never wanted the radio on because she said it was just a lot of racket. I have no idea what car we were in because Pop had sold the ’39 Chevrolet to buy the store. We could have been in Iola’s car but I really think it was our car, yet I’m pretty sure he had not bought another one.

Suicide bombers were taking a great toll in lives and ships in the war with Japan and although we were winning, the enemy would fight to the end but never surrender. Invading Japan would be difficult and we wondered if we could ever end the war.

While we feared the dreadful oncoming invasion of Japan, the news on Monday, August 6, was somewhat beyond our understanding. We had destroyed the city of Hiroshima with just one bomb. It was incomprehensible that such a thing could be done. Would they surrender now knowing that we had such power? The Soviet Union subsequently declared war on Japan moving into Manchuria. Then, on the ninth of August, another atomic bomb was dropped. Japan then opened consideration for ending the war with a cease fire on August 16 followed by an official ending on September 2.

Churchill once said of war:
“Let us learn our lessons. Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy, but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”

There is good argument that the bomb saved many lives, both American and Japanese, because it shortened the war, nevertheless, in bringing it to an end we met those unforeseeable and uncontrollable events of which Churchill spoke and everyone in the world then, now or in the future will have to deal with controlling such power.

The optimism and elation following the war was amazing. Service men began coming home rapidly with everyone looking forward to a new post war world with all the things we had done without for fifteen years. Helicopters, it was said, would be available to everyone to solve traffic problems; DDT would eradicate flies, mosquitoes and other pests. Plastic and glass homes would be ordered from Macy’s. In spite of these exaggerations, the GI’s coming home were going places and spending money catching up what they had missed. It was a good time to be young and returning from the war. For me it was a good time to be twelve.

My brother Sam would be coming home soon; Virginia, Skip and Betty were already in Dallas living in war housing at La Reunion. Dale and Vernice were in Europe; Grady, Iola’s husband, was already in the states. Also coming home was Ted Lincoln, who I had never met but Nita and Sam, who were closer to him in age, knew Ted from our church. Everyone’s hope was to be home by Christmas.

Munger Place in the thirties and the forties was an especially safe community. It probably always had been but I have no way of knowing that. We never locked the door. With several people in the house someone was always coming in and some late at night. Once a drunk man tried to come in the door and Vernice stopped him and told him he had the wrong house and helped him find the right one. Another time a drunk man was found sleeping partially under shrubbery by the Collett side of the house. These were the only problems I remember in the years we lived there until an incident occurred that I believe was in the fall of 1944.

There were a few bars along Collett Avenue over the years. In 1944 there was the Collett Café that served beer, another restaurant that served beer was located in the building that one was the Women’s Exchange and Tea Room. Across Collett from there were a series of bars and other establishments that replaced the Safeway Grocery that had moved to Columbia and Collett. I think a bar was operating there at the time of this incident. At 315 Collett, between Victor and Reiger, Lindy’s Bar followed The Eagle Pharmacy sometime in the mid forties. Also in the mid forties, Bob Crow’s opened on Columbia and Barry.

In spite of the relative peace and quiet that fall, a murder occurred pretty much in our front yard. To my best understanding it played out something like this. There was a married couple that lived in Carole Hancock’s house at 5115 Tremont. Late at night the man’s wife was at one of the bars on Collett. He may have been there with her and left returning to 5115 Tremont. Or he may not have been there but decided to go to the bar to get her but, whatever the situation, he was on his way to the bar on the sidewalk that would pass our house.

As he approached our house, his wife, accompanied by another man, was crossing Tremont at a diagonal from Collett in front of our house. Her husband picked up a 2 by 4 board on the east side of our tree in the parkway and hit the man with it at our curb on the southwest side of the tree. The man died on the spot. My mother woke me as the police and ambulance arrived. She later told me she knew I would be angry later if she didn’t wake me. The following facts or rumors that followed were typical of Texas at that time. The husband was not charged because he had the right to kill a man if he was caught with his wife if it was not pre-meditated. Carole told me the police were blaming the wife but nothing ever came of it.